Promoting Green Industrial Development through Local Content Requirements: India’s National Solar Mission

The article examines the use of local content requirements (LCRs) to align renewable energy deployment with socio-economic goals like job creation and economic development. Using an effectiveness framework applied to India’s National Solar Mission for solar photovoltaics, the analysis identifies three critical conditions for LCRs to be effective: they must be limited in duration with planned evaluations, focused on technologies with available expertise and manageable market barriers, and integrated with training, business linkages, and broader value chain support.

• Local content requirements (LCRs) are used by governments to make renewable energy deployment more politically acceptable by linking climate mitigation with socio-economic objectives such as poverty reduction, economic development, and job creation.
• There is a conflict regarding LCRs between manufacturing interest groups, who lobby for these protection measures, and the international trade community, led by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which aims to restrict them.
• Based on the analysis of India’s National Solar Mission, LCRs are effective only if they are limited in duration with evaluation phases, target technologies where technical expertise exists and market barriers are manageable, and are connected to training, business linkages, and support for other value chain stages and services.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2015). Promoting Green Industrial Development through Local Content Requirements: India’s National Solar Mission. https://www.sei.org/publications/promoting-green-industrial-development-through-local-content-requirements-indias-national-solar-mission/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Promoting Green Industrial Development through Local Content Requirements: India’s National Solar Mission. 2015. https://www.sei.org/publications/promoting-green-industrial-development-through-local-content-requirements-indias-national-solar-mission/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Promoting Green Industrial Development through Local Content Requirements: India’s National Solar Mission |date=23 January 2015 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/promoting-green-industrial-development-through-local-content-requirements-indias-national-solar-mission/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2015promoting, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Promoting Green Industrial Development through Local Content Requirements: India’s National Solar Mission}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2015}, month = jan, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/promoting-green-industrial-development-through-local-content-requirements-indias-national-solar-mission/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }